To quote Richard Feynman, "there's plenty of room at the bottom," and the microprocessor market is no exception. Although high performance is what captured Intel's attention for the past few years, the company is now aggressively targeting the low cost chip market, which holds immense potential and to this day remains largely uncultivated.

To set the record straight, Diamondville does not refer simply to low power CPUs, but in fact also refers to an entire platform. This is because Diamondville processors will come soldered directly onto specially designed boards.

According Intel partner roadmaps leaked to DailyTech, its Diamondville line of processors are based on a completely new architecture drawn up on a “blank sheet of paper.” Intel plans to release two versions of its Diamondville processors, one for desktops and the other for mobile platforms.

Intel’s first Diamondville chips are expected to be released towards the end of Q2’08. At this time, the company will launch the single-core Diamondville-SC 230, which is meant for desktop use, and the Diamondville-SC: 270, which is for use in mobile platforms. Both of these chips have very similar technical specifications, and will run at 1.60 GHz and feature 512KB cache.

Intel guidance suggests that the first dual-core Diamondville chips will launch under the Celeron 3xx SKU. These new chips are expected to be targeted for desktop use only and will make an appearance in Q3’08.

Diamondville processors have a mere 4W to 8W thermal envelope, and are heralded for fan-less design. Intel also boasts that a number of its “leading ODM” partners support Diamondville, so we can expect to see plenty of new products developed based on these chips.

The success of products such as ASUS’ Eee PC has proven to companies that there is plenty of opportunity in the low cost market. Despite only offering modest technical specifications, the Eee PC has proven to be somewhat of a hit in the United States and not only in emerging markets as was expected prior to its release. Processors like Diamondville will help add growth to the low cost PC market not only abroad, but also in the United States.

Already the major notebook designers have realized that the bottom of the chip market is just as important as the top.

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